“The first hour is make-or-break, and we research that rigorously, every few months. We call it baseline testing, because we always do the same routine: sit a new, un-prejudiced user down in front of the current snapshot of Ubuntu or its competitors, tell them they have just been given a new PC, camera, USB stick etc, and invite them to get a list of things done. Things like surfing the web, sending email, sharing a photo with friends via Flickr, etc. The list is the same, so we can compare the effectiveness of Ubuntu as it evolves.

And the great news is that Ubuntu has improved, by this test, tremendously. Of course, all the apps in Ubuntu are improving, which helps a lot. But the Unity team’s work – both on design and implementation – deserves a lot of the credit too.

Many of the changes made stem from that research and testing. Not all of them. But even the crazier bits can be tested in isolation to gain confidence or shape insights. There’s no guarantee we don’t have to go backwards occasionally (c.f. dodging launcher) but it’s definitely true we are, on balance, racing ahead.”

Whether or not one agrees with Mark all of the time it’s hard to not find him eloquent. Replying to one users’ view on the issue Mark sums up the yardstick by which decisions, however contentious, are measured:

“Neither your opinion of what users should think, nor my opinion of what users should think, matters as much as what users actually do think. Be a scientist, not a priest.”

In my mind it’s hard to argue against that logic.

The option to enable dodge will be removed from the CompizConfig Settings Managerso as to ‘keep the code lean’.

“There’s no argument for maintaining code we don’t expose to users further.”